Planche Push Up Challenge

HalloweenNinja

Greetings, fellow MFP board members,

I'm on a mission to take on the last level, the big chief, the Final Boss of push ups: the planche push up. For most, one begins their push up journey of discovery on their knees. Eventually, they are able to rise to their feet to continue their audacious expedition. Some very few are able to rise to the challenge, facing off and defying what they may have once believed was impossible.



I can do standard, feet-bound-by-gravity push ups perfectly fine, and I'm sure many of you will too. But some of you may wish to go beyond that limitation and make our way towards the next level, the next step up. And now I seek some companions for this venture, some fellow travelers who will support, encourage and push one another towards this goal of self fulfillment, the grand sense of personal accomplishment and a damn awesome party trick.

Anyone else looking to work towards being able to conquer the almighty planche push up?

noexcuses1218

I assume you will lead us in this insane venture? I'd love to come along, but I have not the slightest clue how to even begin to work towards that...

ste73

I think your looking at years of upper body strength and core training to pull this 1 out of the hat

HalloweenNinja

I dunno about leading this insane venture, but there's tons of information on exercises, progressions, even workout routines on hand balancing, acrobatics and gymnastics websites. Even training routines on YouTube. While I'm going to just steal a load of this stuff and post in on this thread, primarily I just wanted to see if anyone was interested in being motivation buddies for a common goal.

Yeah, I know this is a long term and, at the moment, distant goal. But that's part of the fun, right? Every minor improvement made *is* an improvement. Like being able to do your first full press up after doing maybe hundreds of push ups on your knee. Or your first clap push up after doing hundreds of normal press ups.

It's a bit like those of us who are on MFP to lose weight; we all have an ideal weight we are all trying to reach. But you know what? Every pound we lose is a pound lost, an improvement on ourselves and an achievement in its own right. Even if it takes years to reach that ultimate goal, we can still look back to how we were weeks or months ago when we started and be proud of how far we've come. =]

MuchMovement

Love the attitude.... I'm down the for the challenge, I've been doing push up variations. I do a lot of sitting in indian style and using my arms to raise my entire body of the the ground and walk a little... I want to be strong enough to do it all!

HalloweenNinja

Hey, MuchMovement, you may well already know of it but - in case you don't - you should definitely check out this website. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing you're looking for:
http://www.lostartofhandbalancing.com/

Right, for anyone who is interested, I was going to base my progressions on something similar to the one in this video (probably the most well known of all videos related to planche push ups):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvbLSgWMJec

I have yet to try, but it does look like that there are quite significant jumps in difficult between his progressions, so my planned progressions are as follows:
(1) Normal push ups
(2) Pseudo-planche push ups (like a normal push up but with my hands at waist level instead of shoulder level)
(3) Decline pseudo-planche push ups (as above, but with my feet on a chair or a something)
(4) Tucked planche push ups (push up with my knees tucked in to my chest and feet not touching the floor)
(5) Advanced tuck planche push ups (as above, but my knees under my waist instead of being at by chest)
(6) Straddle planche push ups (push up with my legs spread out to the sides and feet not touching the floor)
(7) FINAL BOSS! (as above, but legs together)

The plan is to aim to do 3 sets of 5 reps of pseudo-planche push ups.
If/when it gets too difficult, I'll finish off the rest of the sets/reps with normal push ups.
When I manage to go through all 3 sets with good form, I'll start my next session with decline pseudo-planche push ups.
When the decline pseudo-planche push ups get too hard, I'll finish off the remaining reps/sets with pseudo-planche push ups.
When I manage to do all 3 sets of decline pseudo-planche push ups with good form, I'll start my next session with advanced tuck planche push ups.
I'll repeat this pattern over and over until we reach the ULTIMATE CHALLENGE!
And if I can do even just one full planche push up with good form, I'll be chuffed to bits. =D

Obviously that's just my idea at the moment - I'll probably start trying it as of tomorrow morning and see how it goes. I figure that it should only take about 10-15 minutes to go through 3 sets with plenty of rest, so you could probably do that once in the morning and once in the evening, maybe taking a day off to recover once a week. Even if it takes a whole month (i.e. over 50 sessions, or 150 sets, or 750 increasingly difficult push ups) before you can move on to each next progression, it'll mean that you'd be making your first realistic attempt at a full planche push up in 6 months. That's less time than many people have be on this website for! =P

Again, that's just the plan I've got in mind. I've never done any static skill related stuff before (only competitive swimming and team contact sports) so I have no experience in planning skill progressions before; does anyone have any experience in this sort of thing? Is there anything I've messed up and do you have any ideas on what can be improved? =]

Oh, and just for kicks, I found this video on YouTube. Cutest, awesomest lil' kid ever!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihBveAmabkM

MuchMovement

Awesome site!!! I love it! Definitely will come in handy along my journey.

I've been feeling really tight in my upper wrists near my thumb from all the push ups and hand balancing. Do you know any relieving stretches?

HalloweenNinja

You can stretch, but it'll only be temporary relief. There are two long term solutions I can think of:

The quick fix:
Use a set of push up bars, dumb bells or paralettes instead of putting your hands directly onto the ground. That way your wrist isn't forced into an ackward angle. If you've got a good mat, you can do push ups with fists for the same effect. This doesn't really help with hand balancing, though.

The harder, but ultimately better method is wrist conditioning. I know of a low tech and a bit more high tech way. Ironically, the low tech way might actually be more expensive than the high tech way. Go figure.
Low tech: get yourself a bucket and fill it with rice. Plunge your hand into the rice up to your wrist and start stirring the rice, rotating from your wrist. You can start this with a closed fist and, as you get stronger, with an open palm. This was the method I was taught in gymnastics.
High tech: get yourself an "NSD PowerBall". The marketing of this thing is messed up; you need to think of it as training equipment - like a gripper or dumbbells - rather than a kid's toy like it's advertised.

I have no idea what it's like in the US, but here in the UK a NSD PowerBall is cheaper than a bucket of rice. Again, go figure.

Oh, wait, I've just thought of a couple more things we do at gymnastics.
Alternative easy fix: get yourself some wrist wraps. It's probably not ideal considering your personal goals, but it's always an option for when you want to do push ups / handstands and you're getting bored with playing with rice-in-a-bucket.
Another wrist conditioning method: the other thing we do is we play a bit of volleyball, which is also really good for wrist conditioning. Grab yourself a ball and a few friends. =]

Even if wrist conditioning is far from exciting, I get the feeling that you're the sort of person who'll probably want to do handsprings, backflips and stuff. I promise you'll really be thankful of having well conditioned wrists for those.

Hope that helps. =]

HalloweenNinja

No one else interested, uh? Ah well.

Update for anyone who's interested. =]

I've been starting my sets with decline pseudo planche push ups. Holy crap, they're hard: every rep is absolutely max effort, complete with Sharapova-style grunts. After the first set of five, I couldn't do even the first rep of the second rep with anywhere near decent enough form, so it was back to regular pseudo planche push ups. Those b******s are hard enough when you're shoulders are already killing from the set before.

Talking of shoulders, I'm so annoyed with myself right now. I think I pulled a muscle in my shoulder AND my abs today; the former when I was practicing handstands, the other when practicing back somersaults. What the heck?! Anything that involves either feels like I'm tearing it apart, and I can't think of a single exercise that doesn't at least involve some sort of core work! >=[

We'll see how well my body recovers for tomorrow.

spencexxx

Undead!

Sooooo.... Did you make it? I'm a fat sack, but I want to at least get a planche. I'm trying mixed push-ups with lots of decline and such. If you are still going, post progress. If not, wanna start over?